Staying Enhanced
by The Sacred and Profane
Summary: AU. Dr. Lauren Lewis thought she was going to die but finds salvation from one of her subjects. Lost Girl meets Bourne Legacy.
1. Chapter 1

Staying Enhanced

AN: I own nothing in this story. Please R&R.

Dr. Lauren Lewis trembled, her body awash with adrenaline and fear as she instinctively pulled the trigger at the woman in front of her, clicks ringing out. Her breathing was harsh as she glared at the woman. She had a black leather jacket on with a dark undershirt underneath that along with muted greyish khakis, two guns held up by both of her hands in the classic surrender position.

Everything had been normal twenty four hours ago. She had gone to work at the lab, run some tests, but then her world turned upside down. One of her co-workers snapped, started killing her colleagues, men and women she'd known for over five years. She thought she was going to join them but was saved at the last minute by building security, the gunman killing himself after getting shot.

From there, she had been taken to the hospital, questioned by the police, and allowed to go home. But even here, her world had been transfigured.

A truck had pulled up, unexpected visitors making themselves known a mere three hours after buying a ticked to go visit her sister. One of her visitors was a psychologist, a grief counselor, or something like it, she'd said. The other four were men, always alert, scanning her home from the second they'd driven in.

She had talked with the woman, voice tinged with anger as the conversation went into every last detail of her personal life, her failed relationship with Nadia, her assumed survivor's guilt.

Then one of the psychologist's associates had found her gun and they had tried to kill her, making it look like a suicide.

A body crashed into her two would-be killers, engaging them in a brutal fight she couldn't make heads or tails of, instead escaping upstairs and waiting with her back to the wall, gun at the ready.

"Unless you reloaded the gun's empty."

Lauren kept on pulling the trigger, the woman approaching and ducking down to meet her eyes.

"Hey, hey, look at me. Dr. Lewis it's me."

Recognition caused her eyes to widen.

"H-how did you-"

"I'm not here to hurt you."

"That was you!"

"Shh, yes. Listen to me. Do you want to live?" Her hand was on the gun barrel, moving it away from her, her brown eyes probing deeply into hers. "Do you want to live?!" Her voice was controlled, tone fierce.

There was still one armed man searching for them, after all.

"Y-yes..."

"Good, let go of this gun."

"How is this possible?"

She was handed one of the guns the woman had carried in the room with her, Lauren gripping it.

"Good. Now I need you to do exactly what I say." A watch was also presented to Lauren.

"How is this possible?"

"Listen to me." The watch was pressed into her other hand. "Exactly what I say. Understand?"

She nodded.

"Good."

Then the woman outlined her plan, soon leaving Lauren alone.

The doctor's mind was whirring in a million different directions, soon settling on the woman who'd just saved her life, a memory coming to her.

/

"Let me see that hand please."

The woman did as she was asked, holding out the hand she'd injured recently.

Lauren examined it, noticing the lack of any noticeable sign of injury.

"Oh, that has healed well. Any diminished sensation?"

The woman shook her head. "Nope."

Her eyes were slowly sweeping the room, taking in everything, noticing the syringe Lauren was filling.

"You trying to put me down Doc?"

"Well I'm afraid there's been a few gaps in your samples recently..."

"Uh-oh," the woman replied, eyes alight with mirth and something else.

"So we need a full work-up."

The woman sighed, used to the routine by now. It was always the same, come in every three to six months, get your body poked, prodded, scrapped, and drained. Her eyes moved towards the worn dog-tag like case by her side before Lauren grabbed it, moving it to a stand off to the side.

"Another one? Why, is it 'cause I missed a blood drop?"

Lauren didn't respond, didn't even look at her, focused on preparing the syringe.

"So...how do you think it works Doc? Think we can just call a time out? Everything stops? While you pull your samples?"

Lauren finally turned to her. "Why don't you lie down and relax?"

The woman shifted a bit, looking around her briefly once again. "Yeah...what do you think that we do out there?"

"Okay, that's enough information," Lauren replied, tone tight.

"Ah, well...you're just a doctor."

"You know we're on camera..."

Her eyes flitted to the camera in the south-east corner of the room.

"Really? Is that why you make such an attractive appearance?"

"Okay, why don't you count backwards from one hundred, please?"

The woman met her eyes briefly, something lost in them, looking around the room as Lauren injected her.

She counted in Russian, lying back fully as Lauren gently held her down, her eyes gleaming before they closed, the sedative working as Lauren began pulling her samples.

/

She looked at the watch.

Ten seconds was all she had left before she had to act.

What felt like a blink later, it was time. Steadying herself, she pulled the trigger.

On the staircase she heard several shots ring out, then silence for nearly a full minute.

"Hey Doc? I need my watch!"

She got to her feet, exiting the room.

"Doc I need that watch!"

The woman soon appeared after checking the window, Lauren handing her the watch, eyes going a bit wider as she looked at her.

"Are there chems in this house?"

Lauren breathed heavily, anxiety starting to grip her once more.

"Program medication?"

"Are they all dead?"

The woman nodded slightly. "Yeah, they're dead. Look at me, look at me! Do you have program medication here?"

"What?"

"Chems, greens, blues, do you have them here?"

"Here? No..."

"Then where then? Where do you keep them? I need the chems!"

"I understand but I don't have them here. We do...we do virology control...so all of that happens...downstream. We...we don't have medication. If I had any I would give it to you."

The woman's fingers were on either side of her face then, the woman leaning closer, eyes searching her face for signs of a lie.

It seemed to last forever, that look, but the woman stopped, nodding her head, soon looking down at her watch.

"Okay, listen to me. We have less than eight minutes to clear out of here, okay?"

"Yes."

"Good, 'cause the next thing coming through that door is gonna wipe us out."

The woman then moved towards the kerosene containers Lauren kept for fueling, taking them and soon trailing the stuff along every floor, coating the bodies of the men and woman she'd killed.

Suddenly, one of the corpses radios crackled.

"Can I get a sit-rep?" A few moments passed. "If you can here me, pick up Larry."

The man repeated his request as the woman finished dousing the areas she wanted in kerosene, picking up the radio and responding, keeping her voice a bit low.

"Sorry about that. Getting some static. About ten, just wrapping up."

"Okay, just let me know when you're done."

"Copy that."

Placing the radio down, the woman returned to Lauren, the doctor staring at her for a few moments before a lighter was fished out of the woman's pockets and placed in Lauren's hand.

"Probably better you do this..."

The woman moved passed her then, Lauren staring at the lighter and the expanse of her empty home. Her career had been her life, science her passion, and Nadia had left her because of it.

She spared a moment to look at the flame before tossing it towards the fuel trails, darting after the woman who had saved her life as they ran out into the woods surrounding her now burning home.

Blood pounding, brushing past branches, she only focused on running, soon spying a car up ahead, the woman opening the door for her and swiftly getting into the driver's seat.

Behind them, the house continued to burn.


	2. Chapter 2

Zoie Palmer

AN: Again, I own nothing in this story. Please R&R.

Despite the calm she'd felt torching the remnants of her life, Lauren's pulse quickened as she saw the cop car, sirens blazing. Turning to the look at the woman, she opened her mouth.

"Where are we going?"

"Zoie, your name is Zoie Palmer. Say it."

"Zoie Palmer."

"Now pick a place you know, the last place you lived, the place you know."

"Bethesda."

"Good, that's where you live. Anybody asks you're Zoie Palmer from Bethesda. You lost your wallet, I'm driving you home. My name's Anna, Anna and Zoie, you got that?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

It was frightening, how calm this woman was, how she was hyper alert constantly, always looking, always thinking ahead. Lauren knew the cause, knew this woman wasn't exactly human anymore. None of the participants were.

They were better, enhanced, genetic manipulation responsible.

Still, she couldn't really focus on that right now.

"Is that your name?"

"Anna? No! What...you don't know my name? What do you call me? What do you put on my blood work?"

"Five."

"Five?! The number five?" The woman looked torn between laughing and crying. She gave a short bark of a laugh. "You know how many times we've met?"

Lauren shook her head.

"Thirteen. Thirteen exams over the last four years and that's what I get...a number. Number five. Five of what then? How many are we?"

"Program participants?"

"That's what you call us?"

"There were nine, then six."

She shook her head. "Participants," she muttered.

"How did you find me?"

"What do you think? They're going to kill all of us and leave you guys alone? You think your colleague just went crazy? Is that what you think?"

"I...I-"

"They wound him up and set him lose."

"I really have no idea what is going on."

"Well what's going on is they're shutting the whole thing down."

"Who's they?! I don't even-who where the people at the house-"

"No, no, look you had your turn, okay? You've been bleeding and scoping and scraping me since the day we met. It's my turn now. I'm asking the questions, you got it? I need program meds. Where do you keep the chems?"

"I don't have any, I already told you-"

"Bullshit. That's bullshit. That's bullshit! So you don't know anything? You're just the help? You just have the big house and the security clearance, that's why they're trying so hard to kill you, because you don't know anything!"

"I know my job, which is science. I don't know what you do when you leave the lab! None of us do!"

"For four years?"

"Look, I want to get out. Would you please stop the car?"

"You can't be that naive! There's no way you're that naive!"

"Just let me out of the car!"

The woman rolled her eyes and pulled off to the side of the road.

Putting it in park, she addressed Lauren. "You want out, get out. You don't have any chems, you don't know anything, that's fine. Just get out."

Lauren made to leave when the woman held her gaze.

"But you've got a plan right? Yeah, of course you do, you're a doctor, you've got this all worked out, don't ya? What are you gonna do? Huh? What are you going to do? You can't run, not alone. You don't know how and you certainly can't hide, not from people like this, with the resources they have. You won't make it to sundown. So where does that leave you? You can go public, sure, go loud. Call your sister, 'cause that worked out well for you. Call some ex-roommate, call a guy who knows a guy at Time, because if you blow me off that's the only play you've got! But you better ask yourself this, could you ever say it loud enough or fast enough that they'd be too afraid to finish what they started?" She met her gaze then. "Now I've got a plan and it's just not that complicated. What I'm going to do is wait for the next person to show up to kill you and maybe they can help me." Here she unlocked the doors fully. "So go for it."

Lauren touched the handle, feeling the cool metal against her hand.

Inhaling heavily, she turned to look back at the woman.

"You have to understand, all the work at Outcome, all the tests, all the exams, that is us tuning chemistry. We don't fabricate anything. That happens downstream."

"What does that mean? Downstream?"

"It means you need live virus to seed adhesion, cultures are highly reactive so you have to process on-site and we would never do it here."

"On-site where?"

"Manilla, the Philippines."

The woman set her jaw at that and swiftly got out of the car, rounding to the back and leaning against it. Lauren could hear her sigh and decided, after a minute or two, to get out.

She went to where the woman was and looked towards her.

"Where do you stand with your dosage?"

"I have three hundred milligrams of blues which isn't enough for another day and I haven't had a green in fifty one hours, which is strange because I don't feel physically degraded."

"Did you just say you're still taking greens?"

"Yeah."

"Jesus...you were all viraled off greens eight months ago. They infected you with live virus, locked it in. Which means any physical enhancement is now permanent."

"So you infected me? When was this? Is this when I was sick? The "mystery flu" when I almost died? That was you?"

"Well it wasn't me-"

"Why am I asking you? You keep us on a leash, right? Keep a hold on us, keep us dependent?! Who tells you that this is okay?!"

"I do-I do research. I design, I survey, I don't make policy!"

"Na, you just load the gun."

"God...look I was there for the science. We were all there for science. And I know you don't care but I couldn't publish, couldn't conference. I thought I was helping my country!"

"Hey, tell me you can viral off blues? Can you viral off blues?"

"Theoretically, yes. The pills allow temporary adhesion. To lock it in you need live culture, live virus."

"You can do that?"

"Yes, but I told you it's on the other side of the planet!"

The woman grinned then, eyes gleaming. "Then that's where we're going."

/

"So let's say you want to change the human body, repair a mistake, improve something" Lauren said, eyes staring at the road but not paying attention as the woman drove. "Well you need a delivery system and nothing works better than a virus. You pack in genetic mutation, infect the body, and the vector unloads into the target cells. Getting it where you want it, how you want is the nightmare unless you have a map. There was this terrible accident in 1985, researchers died in their lab, a specialist was brought in and he got in there. Underneath all that death was this incredible breakthrough in viral receptor mapping. He had a map. You've had some very minor alterations to two chromosomes. The green side, the physical side, is nothing more than a one and half percent in your mitochondrial protein intake. But even then you've got a major increase in cellular tempo, muscle efficiency, oxygenation."

"And the blue side?"

"Intelligence, obviously but it's more than that. Pain suppression, neural regeneration." Here she stopped to just look at the woman, at what she represented. "It's the most exciting development in the history of the science."

The woman looked back at her for a moment before focusing on the road, her lips parting a bit.

"Well I'm more than just a science project, Doc."

Towards sundown they reach a motel, checking in as Anna Silk and Zoie Palmer. After doing a thorough examination of their room, the woman drops her shoulders, sitting on the bed. Lauren watches her for a bit before going to freshen up in the shower.

After she was done and clothed, she stood looking at her reflection, seeing the woman come behind her.

"Lauren, I uh...you can't call anyone. There are people that care about you that think you're dead. Anyone you contact will become a target. So you need to put aside any normal emotional response that you have. The only edge we've got right now is they think we're both gone, alright?"

She nodded. "Fine."

"So...you're gonna wanna go through this."

She hands her a wallet, watches as Lauren opens it. "Just...you know...just get familiar with it."

Lauren looked down at the credit cards and other identification, seeing that name he'd given her on every one.

Looking back up, into her eyes, she spoke again.

"Who was Zoie Palmer?"

"You are."

She holds the woman's gaze then, seeing some vestige of hurt deep beneath that calculating and intelligent surface.

"Did you know her?"

The hurt rose as she asked the question but the woman didn't cry, didn't give any other outward sign that the question had bothered her.

"Not anymore."

She made to move away but Lauren reached out a hand, gently placing it on her shoulder.

"What's your name?"

The hurt had vanished completely from her eyes as she replied.

"Bo Dennis."

"Why do you have to stay enhanced? Why is it so important to you?"

Bo moved her hand gently off her shoulder, going towards the lap-top she'd set up on the table.

"C'mere.."

Swiftly opening a website by the time Lauren made it across the room, the doctor saw it was a memorial for fallen soldiers. Bo pointed out one picture in particular.

It was her, the intelligence gone from her gaze, staring blankly from the photograph, barely any sign of a smile on her lips.

Kenzi James Reid, killed by a road-side bomb in 2003.

"This...was me...was. My army recruiter was looking to make his quota so he added twelve points to my IQ. Twelve points to make the minimum."

Lauren felt her eyes moisten.

Bo looked up at her from her seated position.

"You ever seen a cognitive degrade, Lauren? Sensory withdrawal, you ever do that? Pull someones blues and watch'em off their meds?"

"No..."

"Because they paint a pretty graphic picture in training. Hell of a long way to fall. If I can't keep it together we won't make it."

Lauren looked at the picture again and then to Bo, shivering at the implications of just what they'd done to this woman.

What she'd done.


End file.
